Matthew Southgate stood in front of the microphones at Royal Troon and ran a hand through his hair, looking like a man who has just survived a dozen nightmares. Asked to assess the conditions at the British Open on Friday, a tired Southgate did not hold back.
“I need to lie down in a dark room,” he sighed. “It’s brutal out there. It’s one of the toughest experiences I’ve had on a golf course. There were crosswinds everywhere and the pins were on the same side where the wind was coming from. It’s very, very difficult. It was like playing golf for survival, really.”
Weather conditions at the British Open are dangerous even under the best of circumstances, and Friday at Royal Troon was, as players later attested, one of the worst of them. The wind was howling at more than 30 miles per hour. As if that wind speed wasn’t enough, the wind direction was unpredictable, changing not only from one end of the course to the next, but from one hole to the next, or even from tee to green.
“Mentally, I mean, it can drive you crazy. It’s very difficult,” Abraham Ancer said. “It’s hard to make putts. It’s hard to leave the ball where you want it to go, you know? Usually you feel like you’ve hit a good shot and you know where it’s going to end up. You have to have a little bit of luck here, too.”
The afternoon draw was a blow. By 19:00 local time, only two players in the field had rounds under par: Jon Rahm at 2 under and MK Kim at 1 under. The 10 players who were under par after two rounds played in the morning wave, either walking off the course or holding on for dear life before the wind reached critical levels.
“It’s funny, I think that five or ten mile per hour difference in wind speed makes a big difference. The front nine was very, very difficult. The whole golf course is very difficult,” Laurie Canter said. “In some cases, you see a lot of putts from, at best, 30 to 50 feet away. It just seems like you’re working hard on every hole.”
The winds affected everything in the area, from the players on the field to the planes flying into nearby Prestwick:
“I think today it was just out of control, because the elements were in control, meaning you were aiming right of a pin and slicing the ball and watching it hook up. So the wind had all the control over the ball. The player couldn’t have control over the wind. I think that’s the turning point today,” Justin Rose said. “Yesterday I felt like it was playable. I felt like yesterday was a fair fight. Today was a little bit more survival.”
Rose tied for the day’s lowest round at 3 under, along with five others, and sits just two shots behind leader Shane Lowry, who fell to 7 under for the week.
While many others have struggled this week, Rose, who has worked his way through the leaderboard, has been having the time of his life. Rose’s birdie on the 18th elicited a Ryder Cup-style roar:
At the other end of the leaderboard, the wind completely eliminated some notable names from the tournament. The two heroes of the US Open, Bryson DeChambeau and Rory McIlroy, struggled from the start on Thursday and served into the wind on Friday. Just a few weeks after a historic duel, both McIlroy and DeChambeau will be heading home early and disappointed.
At least McIlroy could smile at this small, late birdie:
The half-round of the day belonged to Joaquin Niemann, who managed to finish 4 under par on the back nine after recording a stunning quintuple bogey on the par-3 8th, Postage Stamp. “It was a tough hole. It was a tough shot,” Niemann said. “I knew if I got back up quickly I was going to be able to bounce back because I’ve been playing great golf.” He is on par, seven shots off the lead.
Trying to predict the weather in Scotland is like trying to predict how McIlroy will play a given hole, but it looks like the wind will blow with one force on Saturday… and the rain will increase in the afternoon, just as the leaders begin to play. The best day of the tournament might be Sunday, but at Troon, “best weather” is a dubious concept and an ever-changing target.
